Matrix Partners India Invests in Lending Platform Avail Finance

Avail Finance has a raised a total of $17.2M which includes debt and credit lines from multiple NBFCs.

Matrix Partners India has invested in Avail Finance, a Bengaluru based online lending platform. In addition to Matrix Partners India, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola’s cofounders, Binny Bansal, cofounder and group CEO of Flipkart, Kunal Shah, founder of Freecharge; and Manish Patel, founder and CEO of Mswipe, have also participated in the round. Avail Finance has a raised a total of $17.2 million which includes debt and credit lines from multiple NBFCs.

Founded by Ankush Aggarwal and Tushar Mehndiratta in February 2017, Avail Finance caters to India’s blue collared workforce, who are currently underserved by organized lending institutions. With low credit card penetration and the lack of structured credit history, this large segment of the Indian population resorts to availing credit from informal sources at high interest rates. Leveraging alternate digital data and the power of the India stack (Aadhaar, eKYC, UPI), Avail aims to create a seamless lending and repayment process to serve this segment.

Both founders have a background in computer science engineering. Ankush graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has worked with Ola, while Tushar is an alumnus of IIT-Roorkee and has previously worked with Adobe.

Ankush Aggarwal, founder and CEO, Avail Finance said, “With our mission of making credit available to anyone worthy of it, we at Avail, are looking to create an accessible financing and lending ecosystem in the country. By solving for the core of the problem in not having a credit history, using advanced technology, data sciences and artificial intelligence, we are bringing a new approach to an age-old problem. The huge chunk of people in the urban mass who are currently being ignored by the formal lending sector will stand to benefit from Avail’s solutions.”

"Avail represents a fundamental shift in India's lending and financing landscape for the millions who have been financially underserved, with unique mobile technology and AI based solutions. I am very excited to support the Avail team and their vision", said Manish Patel, founder and CEO, Mswipe.

“Consumer lending to the blue-collared workforce is a large, untapped and hard to solve opportunity. We are impressed by Avail’s differentiated sourcing and underwriting strategy, and are privileged to partner with Ankush and Tushar on their journey. We believe it’s still early days of the India fintech story and will continue to invest in the space”, said Vikram Vaidyanathan, managing director, Matrix India.